


High Concept

by facetofcathy



Category: Actor RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Character of Color, First Date, First Time, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-03
Updated: 2010-09-03
Packaged: 2017-10-11 10:45:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/111567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/facetofcathy/pseuds/facetofcathy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A chance meeting between two actors at an audition.  Set in a slightly AU world where Aldis and Jensen are not quite as successful as they are in this one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	High Concept

They'd started out as a crowd but had been winnowed down to just Jensen and one other guy. The other guy had been fiddling with his phone for a while, and he looked up in time to catch Jensen looking his way. He sat up straight and turned off the phone. "This is not looking so good," he said.

Jensen thought about playing it optimistic, but he didn't think ingenue was really a look he could pull off anymore. The guy who'd gone in to read more than 45 minutes earlier hadn't come back out, which meant, "Yeah, I think Mr. Third From Last has got it."

They introduced themselves, so Jensen knew the guy was named Aldis and he had a firm handshake and a friendly smile. Jensen was also 85% certain Aldis had been giving him a little look up and down, and back up again. The receptionist came out to tell them that they'd run out of time but she'd call their agents to book another audition for the next week.

"So is I'll call you the biggest lie in Hollywood?" Jensen said as they walked out into the afternoon sunshine.

"I don't know," Aldis said, and this time Jensen was sure he'd just gotten that certain sort of once over. "Why don't you give me your number and we'll find out?"

Jensen laughed at the cheesy line. Aldis had delivered it with such sincerity and confidence that Jensen took the offered phone and punched in his number, as much to reward a good line reading as for any more optimistic reason. He told himself he didn't expect to hear from Aldis any sooner than he would his agent.

* * *

He did hear from his agent—twice. Once to let him know that Mr. Third From Last _was_ in, but Jensen should not let that get to him. Jensen hadn't been particularly bothered by the loss of even a chance at the role until Jules told him not to be. She tried a few of her stock lines on him, all about how he should start thinking about doing comedy; the same things she'd been saying since his 27th birthday. Jensen didn't want to think about that at all.

Jules called the second time to tell him he should forget all about comedy, which was out of fashion anyway, while lighthearted capers were all the rage. She had a line on a part in a new cable show about spies or maybe con men or possibly both. Jensen wasn't too clear on the concept from her description, but he wrote the day of the audition on his calendar.

He went two for two when Aldis called him a day later. Aldis invited him to meet him later in the week at what sounded like a coffee bar or an art gallery, but also had live music. Jensen said yes happily enough, even though he was now only 75% sure this was a date and not just a way for Aldis to pad the audience for his friend's band on a weeknight.

* * *

Jensen took his camera out for a walk in one of his favourite places. He took his usual couple of dozen shots of the rusted-out iron hulk of a ship that had run aground off a private marina and been abandoned. He'd found it one day just driving around, and he kept coming back to it, taking more pictures of it. The thing had been painted, more than once, and the hull near the water line was striped in blue and orange and a yellow that blurred into rust that blurred in turn into a surreal sort of lace where some of the iron was rusted completely away.

He had one shot, he thought might be worth keeping, where the focus was perfect and the colours were vibrant, washed clean from a rainstorm the night before. He had framed the shot so you could see the variegated progression of water to metal to sky, but you couldn't tell what greater whole the iron was a part of. He didn't really know what the picture was supposed to be about, but it looked good.

* * *

The audition ended up being fun, which never happened. They were taken into a boardroom in what looked like random groups of four—men, women, all ages, all ethnicities, just like the call sheet had said—and handed sides for a couple of scenes. The show seemed to be about a spy, a con man, a cop and a priest. One of the other actors, a big guy who'd pushed past 40, flashed a big toothy grin and asked if they all walked into a bar, and the producer said, "That scene will run under the opening titles," so deadpan that Jensen half believed he meant it.

Jensen had the part of the cop the first run through. When they were done, they all passed their scripts one place to the right and now Jensen was a priest. The producer sat at the end of the table while they went through the same two scenes four times and barely said another word.

Jensen thought the best run through was the first where he was the cop and a Black woman he'd seen in something, and that was going to bug the shit out of him until he remembered what, was the priest. It had been fun, but Jensen couldn't really see how you could develop a show without knowing who your characters were, and he figured is was all a bit of a publicity stunt doomed to be an un-aired pilot. He'd shot four of those. He didn't want to make a career out of it.

* * *

He found Aldis waiting in front of the place his friend was playing at as promised, and Aldis met him with a handshake that turned into some sort of complicated, back-slapping half-hug routine that had Jensen downgrading the date percentage quite a lot. They were standing outside of a big, old, brick building with a huge pair of doors painted in what looked like a dozen coats of candy apple red gloss. Jensen still couldn't tell what the place was supposed to be.

Aldis led him up a short flight of stairs and inside. A blast of ice-cold, conditioned air had Jensen crossing his arms over his chest. He'd picked the very tight, white tee-shirt he was wearing in the hopes it might influence the date percentage a little, but he'd never quite got the hang of flaunting himself without a camera between him and the rest of the world.

Aldis kept a hand on his shoulder as they squeezed through the crowds. They passed through a perfumed mass of women, looking ready to seriously party at a club Jensen wouldn't try to get into dressed in jeans, all clustered around a nail salon that seemed to have sprouted out of the floor in the middle of the foyer. Then they moved through a mixed crowd of people milling around a staircase that split to go up for a couple of flights or down. Deeper into the gloom of the first floor, Jensen could make out a scatter of small tables and chairs behind a large iron grill. The scent of roasted coffee and burnt sugar hung in the air.

"We're going to the basement," Aldis said. "Upstairs is a club and a gallery space, and that is the café, closed now, but you should try it sometime. It's really good. Downstairs is the bar where Chris plays every Thursday."

"This place is really something," Jensen said, eyeing the exposed beams and bulky, red-painted pipes overhead as they descended into a dim, cool room full of wood and iron and sporting a very impressive row of beer taps behind the bar.

"Yeah, it is, isn't it? Makes me miss school a hell of a lot."

They got settled at a table a few rows back from the stage, and their waiter appeared almost immediately. "Hey, Aldis, fancy seeing you here," he said, laying a casual hand on Aldis's wrist for a moment. "I know what you want, how about your friend?" The waiter turned a more professional looking, enquiring smile Jensen's way.

Jensen sorted out his beer options with the waiter, and Aldis waved at one or two people sitting up closer to the stage.

"So you said something about school?" Jensen said. "Is acting not your only iron in the fire?"

"I'm giving acting a fair shot, and so far I've been enjoying myself, but I like learning, and I miss school. The guy that designed this place, the renovation, he was one of my teachers—architecture and design. Every time I come here I start hankering after the classes again."

"So architecture, huh. That's—"

"Sort of unusual for an actor?" Aldis supplied with a smile.

"Waiter _is_ more traditional," Jensen said, and sat back to let theirs drop off their drinks.

"You ever wield the tray for a living?"

Jensen laughed. "I was once named surliest little shit to ever sully a restaurant floor."

Aldis looked unconvinced, which just goes to show that as long as he's not in the service industry Jensen can be a personable guy.

"No, seriously, there was a plaque and everything. So ended my career moonlighting as a waiter. I got a part in a soap for six months, so I didn't starve."

Aldis gave him the look all aspiring actors who never, ever wanted to be on a soap gave him whenever he mentioned his early career spent hopping from one sudsfest to the other until he actually managed to get a recurring in a series for the first time.

Chris came on stage to do his set to the appreciative applause of the women up front. He was good, if a little too chicken-fried for Jensen's taste, and Aldis had the enthusiastic smile on his face of a guy who would never admit he hated his friend's music. Jensen's estimation of the date percentage was down below 50 now, but he didn't think Aldis was exactly a bad catch as a friend.

They parted outside right where they'd met, and Aldis surprised him by asking to meet up on the weekend. Jensen decided to call it a straight-up 50% on the date thing, and he headed home looking forward to the weekend.

* * *

They met up on Sunday afternoon at exactly the same place. This time Aldis met Jensen with an even more enthusiastic backslapper of a hug, and they ended up in the café, looking out over a slope of lawn that led down to a busy road. Jensen was finding the traffic mesmerizing to watch and the conversation had lagged, so he decided to pick Aldis's brain on his most recent audition.

"Sounds interesting to me," Aldis said when he'd explained how it had gone.

"Yeah, if by interesting you mean weird, but how can you write that way—with no real idea who the characters are? They said we were reading from a final draft pilot script, which might have been bullshit, but still."

"But how much difference is there really in a cop who's a white guy or a cop who's a Black woman—you said one of your group was a Black woman, yeah?"

Jensen nodded. "Yeah, and she was good, and I totally forgot to look up who she was. Damn, I know her from somewhere." He'd remembered to look up Aldis and found out very little other than the fact he had an older brother who was also an actor and was a lot younger than he looked.

"You know," Aldis said, and he leaned forward and rested his hand on Jensen's wrist, "my dad uses one of those voice recorder things, so he doesn't forget to pick up the dry cleaning and shit."

Jensen glared at Aldis, but couldn't sustain it in the face of a very self-satisfied grin. "Anyway, smart ass, there was the woman I know from somewhere and one younger Latino guy and another white guy who was about forty I guess, and then me."

"Okay," Aldis said, serious again. Jensen was getting used to the ebb and flow of his smart ass crap breaking into his serious conversation. It kept him on his toes. "So did you have any trouble playing all four parts?"

"Nah, well, I don't think I did so hot with the spy part. I think I slipped into James Bond parody rather than actual acting."

"What about the other three?"

"The older guy was a bit one-note. Affable, he could do, so he kind of sucked as the spy, but if he'd been a better actor—and I get what you're saying, but a show is not an acting exercise and there's shit you can write for a woman that you can't for a man, and—"

"Shit you can write for a Black dude that you can't for a fresh-faced, freckled young thing like you. Yeah. Then there's the shit the audience expects and the network likes." Aldis said. "I don't know, Jensen, this could be a really interesting show if they focus on casting four people who click, you know, and forget about some of that shit."

"No freckle jokes, dude, that's rule one." Jensen said, a little rankled that Aldis was arguing, however gently, with him. He wondered what that reading would have been like with Aldis playing the priest against his cop.

Aldis grinned at him, not at all contrite. "Ah, baby, I like your freckles, gives you that wholesome look."

Jensen snorted. If anyone at this table looked wholesome it was the young and very fresh-faced Aldis, especially with that grin. "I've spent ten years in Hollywood trying very hard not to be wholesome."

"Oh, yeah?" Aldis said, and this time the once over was slow enough and blatant enough that Jensen pretty much had to call the date-o-meter busted, but at least he knew what the hell they were doing finally.

"If you ask me if the freckles are everywhere, I have to kill you, you know that, right?"

"I'll stick to something safer like do you want to come back to my place, then."

* * *

Aldis's place was small and a little shabby and had a view of a parking lot, but the inside was beautiful. The walls were sky blue and bright white and sunny yellow, and the furniture was battered leather in brown and maroon that looked comfortable next to the sleek, black wide-screen TV.

Jensen ignored the television and the incongruity of the hard-backed chair in a corner with a violin case on it, and crossed to the wall in what should have been the dinette. The room itself was dominated by a drafting table and a computer workstation jacked up to match the height of the drafting stool, but the attraction was the wall that held the most intriguing thing Jensen had ever seen.

He knew Aldis was watching him study the piece, not that Jensen had any idea what it was, but he couldn't take his eyes off it. This was not smooth, not the straight line to the bedroom he'd been thinking about on the way over, but this _thing_ had his attention snared, and he couldn't shake loose.

It was nothing more than a scatter of metal gears mounted on a hunk of plywood. The wood hadn't been painted or even smoothed out, and as Jensen studied it, he noticed there were gouges in the wood here and there. The gears were every size, from large chunks of iron that looked like antique farm machinery parts, to tiny brass bits of clockwork, and anything in between. There were glints of brass and polished steel, dark iron and flecks of rust. It smelled, almost unpleasantly, like oil and metal and dirt.

It was, Jensen realized embarrassingly slowly, an actual clockwork. The gears were not mounted to create a pleasing pattern, there was no order or symmetry, only the interlocking of teeth. The largest part, a black iron wheel that gleamed with a faint sheen, had a wooden handle on it, worn smooth from years of use. Jensen reached out to touch the handle, a soft brush of his fingers skidding over the wood.

Aldis had come up behind him, close enough for Jensen to smell the spice of his cologne mingling with the metal and oil. He set his hands lightly on Jensen's hips. "Slowly," Aldis said quietly. "And it takes more force to get it going than you'll expect."

Jensen griped the handle and turned the wheel. It barely moved, so he bore down, and the whole complex, chaotic mess of pieces started to turn. The smallest bits, clumped together and set to independent motion by one middling-sized ring with surprisingly fine teeth, spun with wild speed. It didn't whirr, so much as clank and grind, as it all moved grudgingly.

Jensen let go of the handle, and the inertia was absorbed almost immediately, like the thing wanted to be still. "It's—Is this art?" Jensen asked.

"If it is, it's accidental," Aldis said. He slid closer, wrapping his arms around Jensen's waist until his head was on Jensen's shoulder. "I just like the way things fit together."

"You really are the king of cheesy lines, Aldis."

"King, I like that." He pulled Jensen back against his body.

The _thing_ was still fascinating; the longer Jensen looked at it, the more he wanted to look at it. He could see all the parts, see how they all fit together, but he didn't know what it _was_.

Aldis pressed closer, wrapped his arms tighter, and Jensen shifted his focus. He leaned back a little more, forcing Aldis to step back and loosen his hold. He turned away from the wall and circled Aldis with his arms, pulling them together again. They were of a height, nearly exactly, and nearly the same build too. Aldis was a little thinner, leaner, and his legs seemed to go on forever, but his mouth was right there where Jensen needed it to be.

They kissed softly and slowly, testing the angles, and then Aldis wrapped his hand around Jensen's head tilting him just so. Jensen resisted, pushed back, until he gave in with a huff of deliberately overplayed annoyance. He ground his hips against Aldis, pulled him tighter with the arm Jensen had wrapped around his waist, while his other hand went exploring. Aldis ignored all that in favour of taking over Jensen's mouth and using it how he liked.

It was hot where they stood, the afternoon sun dazzling Jensen if he opened his eyes. They were writhing against each other, stirring up body heat, and Jensen was losing the smell of oil and metal to the closer, headier scents of Aldis's body.

Jensen flexed his body back, breaking Aldis's hold on him again. He opened his eyes, squinting against the glare. "Bed, please," he said, turning so his body eclipsed the sun letting him see Aldis again, "or at least less denim."

"How about both?"

"Sold."

The bedroom was barely bigger than the bed. One wall was entirely windows covered in drawn shades casting the room in a comfortable gloom. They were knocking elbows getting undressed in the cramped space between the windows and the bed. Aldis caught Jensen as soon as he'd kicked free of his underwear and bore him down on the bed.

Jensen threw his arms over his head in surrender. He'd caught a blast of air from the A/C and his nipples were overreacting like they always did. Aldis seemed enthralled and was ignoring Jensen's suggestive hip thrusts entirely.

Jensen went exploring, skimming his fingers over Aldis's ears, the soft skin of his neck down to his jaw, and then around to the back. Aldis gave a little shiver when Jensen scraped his nails over the nape of his neck, so Jensen did it again a little harder, and Aldis made a deep sound of pleasure that had Jensen craving more.

Aldis pushed up to his knees, straddling Jensen's legs; he arched his back, arms high over his head. It was a shameless display, complete with a self-aware smirk, and Jensen rolled his eyes, feigning indifference. He couldn't keep up the facade for long, didn't want to. He slid his hand along the soft hair on Aldis's thighs, curving around to the soft skin on the inside. He was sheened with sweat, his balls hot against Jensen's palm.

"What do you have in mind?" Aldis asked him.

"Too many things," Jensen said and laughed. "I'm like this in restaurants too. I can never decide what I want."

"Greedy or indecisive?"

"Maybe both," Jensen admitted.

"Anything you're going to say no to?" Aldis said, sounding like he was getting ready to take charge.

"Probably, but I doubt it's the first thing you'd think of."

Aldis didn't make a move, and Jensen wondered if his confidence had finally run out or if he was having a hard time choosing as well. Jensen flexed his fingers, still idly cupping Aldis's balls, and Aldis made another soft sound of pleasure.

"Okay," Jensen said, and he wriggled up and out from under Aldis. "You're going to need to lie down for this part." He gave Aldis a nice encouraging push against his chest which had no noticeable effect.

Aldis braced his hands on the bed and leaned back. Jensen studied this position, checking the angle of his arms the splay of his legs, looking for a weakness that he knew wasn't there. He nodded to himself and rose up on his knees, bringing himself up high enough to loom over Aldis. He knew a few wrestling tricks from a childhood spent with an older brother. He knew a whole different set of tricks too.

"If you lie down," Jensen said, pitching his voice down into his best throaty growl, "you will get a very, very good blow job."

Jensen caught Aldis's left leg as it came swinging out from under him when he scrambled to get flat. Jensen pulled him bodily a foot or so closer, showing off. He sprawled flat between Aldis's legs, taking his tongue to Aldis's balls for a while before he propped himself up on one elbow and applied himself to Aldis's dick. Aldis wasn't afraid to make some noise, show his appreciation, and that always got Jensen wound up, more than the doing of it ever did. He wasn't in the most comfortable position and couldn't get a hand near his own dick, so he pulled off and got back up on his knees.

Aldis wrapped his legs around Jensen and tugged him half off-balance. "Come here," Aldis said, demanded, really.

Jensen considered saying no, but then he considered what he might get if he acquiesced. He crawled up Aldis's body and lowered himself slowly, shimmying into place. He wasn't surprised when Aldis captured his head again, then his mouth. Aldis pressed down on Jensen's ass with his free hand and rolled his hips slowly at first, and then faster, urgently. Jensen was getting overwhelmed, feeling a little bit trapped, and he flexed hard again, shaking his head free so he could push up on his arms and fuck against Aldis. Aldis bucked up against him, harder, faster.

They weren't trying to outlast each other, but they were contesting for the right to set the pace. Just because they both wanted to go faster, didn't mean they couldn't fight about it. Jesus, he wanted Aldis to fuck him. Wanted Aldis to try to hold him down while he did it. Jensen grinned down at Aldis, picturing it, wondering how well the inevitable bruises would show on Aldis's skin.

Aldis went quiet, thrusting up against Jensen roughly as he came. He dropped back to the bed in a sated sprawl.

Jensen couldn't keep up the pace, and Aldis wasn't giving anything to push against anymore. He rose up to his knees, braced his left hand and used the other to jerk himself hard and fast.

Aldis muttered a lethargic sounding, "Yeah, baby," when Jensen shot all over him.

Jensen laughed at Aldis and twisted around to lie beside him. He was hot and sleepy and happy. He wanted a nap, and when he woke up, he was going to work very hard at goading Aldis into round two.


End file.
